Hbo Show Focuses On Lost Soldiers' Final Words

November 12, 2004|By Joanne Weintraub Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Even before her daughter's death, Lori Witmer used to carry Michelle's letters around in her purse until they were curled at the edges and worn in the creases. They were that important, that eloquent, that evocative of a soldier's life in the heat and dust of Iraq.

After U.S. Army Spc. Michelle Witmer's convoy was ambushed on April 9, of course, the letters became even more precious.

So a few months later, when filmmaker Bill Couturie approached the Witmers about including some of Michelle's letters in a documentary, the surviving members of the family did not take the request lightly.

"We probably kicked it around for several weeks, all of us," dad John Witmer says in a phone interview. "We wanted to find a way to remember Michelle that would endure."

Last Letters Home, Couturie's film, premiered Thursday on HBO. Like Dear America, his Oscar-winning documentary on the soldiers of Vietnam, it is likely to endure for many Veterans Days.

Several of Michelle's letters and e-mails, read by members of her family at their New Berlin, Wis., home, open the hourlong film.

Just 19 when her National Guard unit was deployed to Iraq and 20 when she became the first Wisconsin National Guard member to be killed in Iraq, Michelle wrote about her job helping to keep chaos at bay at a police station in a tough area of Baghdad.

"There is so much to tell you I'm not exactly sure where to begin," she opened one letter, going on to recount treating a man who'd been pistol-whipped, seeing her first dead body, experiencing a close call with a grenade and dodging sniper fire twice in one evening.

The letters gave her family a different perspective on a distant event.

In a more reflective, almost dreamy mood, Spc. Witmer, who signed her letters with her nickname -- "Love, Shelly" -- wrote about herself in the third person:

"She pondered how this year had changed her perspective on life, culture, war and things worth dying for. She began to think about her many experiences.

"Some would call them adventures, some nightmares, but she preferred to think of them as spices that gave the story of her life richer flavors and saucier smells. Yes, her life had definitely gone from TV dinners to world cuisine."

The film includes letters from one other American servicewoman and eight men who died in Iraq, ranging in age from 19 to 51, with recollections from their wives and children, parents and siblings and others whose lives were changed forever by the war.

"I hope you feel like me when I call, because it always keeps me smiling for the next week or two," Army Spc. Robert Wise of Florida wrote to his mother, Tammy.

Army Pfc. Jesse Givens of Colorado wrote to his wife, Melissa, in a letter he asked her not to open unless he was killed: "You are my angel, soulmate, wife, lover and best friend. ... I did not want to have to write this letter. There is so much more I need to say, so much more I need to share. A lifetime's worth."

Melissa Givens was pregnant with a boy when her husband's 70-ton tank plunged into the Euphrates River. To their unborn child -- his first, her second -- Jesse wrote: "I never got to see you but I know in my heart you are beautiful. I know you will be strong and big-hearted just like your mom and brother."